Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 295X2, which features a core clock speed of 1018 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 295X2		21205 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 13244 (166%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 250 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 295X2 should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 400000 (167%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be a lot (approximately 243%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 253840 (243%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 100448 (336%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.